Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this. I was gone for a long
weekend visiting my sister and her newborn daughter. However, I did get a
bunch of new code written. I'm still trying to work out the bugs on new
drag and drop support for the Linux version (which is the first time we
will have drag and drop in PageStream) plus some work on copy/paste (which
is tightly tied with dnd). Also played some with integrating lcms into the
display code. Will be better than existing color management.

>I find the font drop-down menu to be really annoying: the dock (sorry, I
>forget the PgS term for it) is normally at the bottom of the screen and the
>font list is literally a drop-down sized for the screen rather than a pop-up.
>It is difficult to select the correct font when my context consists of three
>visible names in the list. Hmm... out of habit I try to get more details as I
>write the email and now it is insisting on acting as a drop-up -- which is
>much more desirable. However, the drop-down is the behavior it has
>consistently done in the past. I dunno.

Hmm. I've noticed that also, but that would be a bug in gtk widgets I'm
afraid. The popup should always pop _up_ when it is that close to the
bottom. Short of doing our own widget I'm not sure how I can fix this. I'll
take a look and if I can't fix it with a (relative) simple solution, I'll
put it on the list.

>Anyway, I closed PgS and re-opened the document, no crash. But! it opened the
>font substitution requestor. It wanted to convert arial and times new roman
>-- fine, neither one is on my system. On the other hand, neither one should
>have been in the test document which consisted of a single text frame and one
>line of text set in the default font -- which happened to be. . . sans? I
>don't have any font by that name either. Okay, change the font to something
>that is in my font list. Sorry, I forget what I changed it to. Save, close
>PgS, restart and reopen.

OK, the problem is that every document created new, loads the default
styles pagestream4.styles and those definitions are straight from Windows.
They need to be updated for Linux. The problem I have is what are the
standard fonts? It seems like a font mess.

What fonts to folks use for their standard "serif" and "san-serif" font on
Linux?

Same for the default replacement of Arial. It needs to be something on your
actual machine. I'll put in code that will choose the first font in the
font list if it can't find the prefered default, but I really should come
up with a decent default replacement. If you leave it as convert to arial,
it will of course do that, but then turn around and as you next time to
substitute for Arial (which it will suggest you should do with Arial .

> From the readme on the website I gather that the printer setup requestor
>should be working. But screen, source and size are unavailable. Also, I still
>think the fonts being messed are more than just being downloadable. I printed
>the postscript fontlist on my printer and I am using fonts from the list, but
>they all print as Courier.

Did you choose a PPD?

>I exported the same page as PDF and checked the font list in Acrobat Reader
>and, for example ITC Zapf Chancery was listed as Zapf Chancery ITC. In PgS
>the font list gives it correctly as ITC Zapf Chancery.

That could be a problem! The font names we use in the output of PDF and
PostScript is what freetype tells PageStream the postscript name is for
those fonts! I'll take a look at it...

>Tim Doty

Deron Kazmaier - support@grasshopperllc.com
Grasshopper LLC Publishing -http://www.grasshopperllc.com
PageStream DTP for Amiga, Linux, Macintosh, and Windows

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On Friday 26 September 2003 20:39, PageStream Support wrote:
> Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this. I was gone for a long
> weekend visiting my sister and her newborn daughter. However, I did get a
> bunch of new code written. I'm still trying to work out the bugs on new
> drag and drop support for the Linux version (which is the first time we
> will have drag and drop in PageStream) plus some work on copy/paste (which
> is tightly tied with dnd). Also played some with integrating lcms into the
> display code. Will be better than existing color management.

I trust you enjoyed the visit. And it sounds like you have been very busy!

[snip]
> OK, the problem is that every document created new, loads the default
> styles pagestream4.styles and those definitions are straight from Windows.
> They need to be updated for Linux. The problem I have is what are the
> standard fonts? It seems like a font mess.
>
> What fonts to folks use for their standard "serif" and "san-serif" font on
> Linux?

Thats a good question. I finally got around to adding fonts to my system
(without PgS I really didn't have much need) so it is hard for me to tell for
sure which were there before. I think Luxi Sans, Luxi Serif, Nimbus Sans and
Nimbus Roman were all there. However, I'm reasonably sure that the font
selection will vary with distro and probably between version numbers.

I also noticed that the default display font in my gui is sans, but that isn't
on my system. As close as I can tell my display fonts are usually Nimbus
Sans.

[snip]
>
> > From the readme on the website I gather that the printer setup requestor
> >should be working. But screen, source and size are unavailable. Also, I
> > still think the fonts being messed are more than just being downloadable.
> > I printed the postscript fontlist on my printer and I am using fonts from
> > the list, but they all print as Courier.
>
> Did you choose a PPD?

Oh yes. And double checked and triple checked. And the PPD is for my printer
(it is the same one I use for CUPS). BTW: I was pleasantly surprised to
discover that Mac OS X uses CUPS -- I guess that should be a nice overlap.
>
> >I exported the same page as PDF and checked the font list in Acrobat
> > Reader and, for example ITC Zapf Chancery was listed as Zapf Chancery
> > ITC. In PgS the font list gives it correctly as ITC Zapf Chancery.
>
> That could be a problem! The font names we use in the output of PDF and
> PostScript is what freetype tells PageStream the postscript name is for
> those fonts! I'll take a look at it...

Okay.

Any thoughts as to why the document crashes the PgS? That is, once I chase
full circle and it seems that the font substitutions would all have been made
the PgS crashes loading the document.

I do appreciate all the work on PgS. It has come a long way in the last year.

Tim Doty

On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 23:20:14 -0500
Tim Doty <drakki@rollanet.org> wrote:

> On Friday 26 September 2003 20:39, PageStream Support wrote:
[...]
> > Also
> > played some with integrating lcms into the display code. Will be
> > better than existing color management.
==================

lcms is a good choice, since this is turning up in most all distros now
and installed by default. It's also easily available to any others,
that's one of the nice things about Linux. Scribus presently uses it
for color management, which works nicely. No need to reinvent the
wheel, right?

------------------

> [snip]
> > OK, the problem is that every document created new, loads the
> > default styles pagestream4.styles and those definitions are straight
> > from Windows. They need to be updated for Linux. The problem I have
> > is what are the standard fonts? It seems like a font mess.
> >
> > What fonts to folks use for their standard "serif" and "san-serif"
> > font on Linux?
>
> Thats a good question. I finally got around to adding fonts to my
> system (without PgS I really didn't have much need) so it is hard for
> me to tell for sure which were there before. I think Luxi Sans, Luxi
> Serif, Nimbus Sans and Nimbus Roman were all there. However, I'm
> reasonably sure that the font selection will vary with distro and
> probably between version numbers.
>============================

Wouldn't it be best to do PgS like OpenOffice does and just supply the
default font with the program? That way you don't have to worry about
it or have PgS trying to find a non-existent font? The user could
change the default, once installed on their systems? As Tim points out,
the fonts he mentions are pretty standard ones and have been available
in SuSE since I started using it, so they have not changed. Other
distros might be not be using those though. IIRC, from my short runs of
RH, MDK and a couple of others, they may not have been included at all.
OpenOffice always defaulted to "Thorndale", which was the font they
included. I believe it defaults to a Times Roman now, with the new
version.

----------------------

> [snip]
> >
> > > From the readme on the website I gather that the printer setup
> > > requestor
> > >should be working. But screen, source and size are unavailable.
> > >Also, I
> > > still think the fonts being messed are more than just being
> > > downloadable. I printed the postscript fontlist on my printer and
> > > I am using fonts from the list, but they all print as Courier.
> >
> > Did you choose a PPD?
>
> Oh yes. And double checked and triple checked. And the PPD is for my
> printer (it is the same one I use for CUPS). BTW: I was pleasantly
> surprised to discover that Mac OS X uses CUPS -- I guess that should
> be a nice overlap.
==========================

One of the problems with Gnome/GTK is their support for CUPS. It's not
very good and that can create some problems programming to use cups. I
know Scribus uses cups, but doesn't use cups also. Of course, it's a
QT3 program and there is much better support there. It does use it's
own printing engine, somewhat though. It still prints thru cups, but
many of the controls are Scribus. With PageStream having it's own
drivers, which have always worked well, it might be a good idea to
continue that in some way, transferring final output to the users
installed printers? Couldn't you in that way, cut some of the
dependency on cups or lprng?

Patrick

--
---SuSE Linux v8.2 Pro---
Registered Linux User #225206
"Life's a garden, Dig It!" --Joe Dirt

>One of the problems with Gnome/GTK is their support for CUPS. It's not
>very good and that can create some problems programming to use cups. I
>know Scribus uses cups, but doesn't use cups also. Of course, it's a
>QT3 program and there is much better support there. It does use it's
>own printing engine, somewhat though. It still prints thru cups, but
>many of the controls are Scribus. With PageStream having it's own
>drivers, which have always worked well, it might be a good idea to
>continue that in some way, transferring final output to the users
>installed printers? Couldn't you in that way, cut some of the
>dependency on cups or lprng?

Our use of cups is a direct implementation. We don't use any of the
available gnome/gtk print functionality. We can do that because we are
using the same postscript printer driver that we use on the Mac, Amiga, and
Windows The problem with the missing choices in print setup is not a
problem with our interface to cups, but actually a problem with the widgets
in that requester (near as I can tell so far). The PPD parsing code is
still in our postscript driver.

Could we skip cups all together? yes, we could. But as we have found out,
trying to support all the available non-postscript printers gets to be a
night mare. Plus the problem with network shared printers gets to be a big
headache as well. I don't see using cups as a problem, since it appears to
be on everyones machine. If I was to try and elliminate a dependency, it
would be the gnome libs and just be a pure gtk app! Especially considering
the crappy file selector it defaults with.

However, in the future I will be providing print to bitmap functionality in
this new display library (it actually already has that functionality, but
it doesn't have the dither/halftone/fs code in yet for outputing to
non-true color bitmaps.)

>Patrick
>
>--
> ---SuSE Linux v8.2 Pro---
> Registered Linux User #225206
> "Life's a garden, Dig It!" --Joe Dirt

Deron Kazmaier - support@grasshopperllc.com
Grasshopper LLC Publishing -http://www.grasshopperllc.com
PageStream DTP for Amiga, Linux, Macintosh, and Windows

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On Saturday 27 September 2003 08:45, PageStream Support wrote:
> Our use of cups is a direct implementation. We don't use any of the
> available gnome/gtk print functionality. We can do that because we are
> using the same postscript printer driver that we use on the Mac, Amiga, and
> Windows The problem with the missing choices in print setup is not a
> problem with our interface to cups, but actually a problem with the widgets
> in that requester (near as I can tell so far). The PPD parsing code is
> still in our postscript driver.

Cool. Any chance that things will be modified so that it doesn't turn off
duplexing? Or, even better, provide the three choices (none, long-edge flip,
short-edge flip)? Currently to get duplexing I print to file, convert to pdf
(this embeds fonts), and print the pdf from acroread using kprinter.
Strangely, printing the pdf from kprinter directly also turns off duplexing.
It would be handy to not have to contort as 99.99% of the time I need duplex
printing.
>
> Could we skip cups all together? yes, we could. But as we have found out,
> trying to support all the available non-postscript printers gets to be a
> night mare. Plus the problem with network shared printers gets to be a big
> headache as well. I don't see using cups as a problem, since it appears to
> be on everyones machine. If I was to try and elliminate a dependency, it
> would be the gnome libs and just be a pure gtk app! Especially considering
> the crappy file selector it defaults with.

And seeing as I only use network printers I'm happy about the current
situation. I just have some font issues.
>
> However, in the future I will be providing print to bitmap functionality in
> this new display library (it actually already has that functionality, but
> it doesn't have the dither/halftone/fs code in yet for outputing to
> non-true color bitmaps.)

Although I would rarely have use for it that it is a handy functionality.

>Cool. Any chance that things will be modified so that it doesn't turn off
>duplexing? Or, even better, provide the three choices (none, long-edge flip,
>short-edge flip)? Currently to get duplexing I print to file, convert to pdf
>(this embeds fonts), and print the pdf from acroread using kprinter.
>Strangely, printing the pdf from kprinter directly also turns off duplexing.
>It would be handy to not have to contort as 99.99% of the time I need duplex
>printing.

I think this is all possible. I am still trying to figure out all of cups.
I almost have drop text working. It is now crashing with the font
subsitution requester Now I guess it is time I figured out what is
happening there! Should have a new release this week!

Deron Kazmaier - support@grasshopperllc.com
Grasshopper LLC Publishing -http://www.grasshopperllc.com
PageStream DTP for Amiga, Linux, Macintosh, and Windows

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On Wednesday 01 October 2003 13:15, PageStream Support wrote:
> happening there! Should have a new release this week!

Woohoo! It just keeps getting better and better!

Tim Doty

P.S. If you don't make a release this week I won't hold it against you

Well, I just tracked down 5 different bugs in the Linux version today. Just
one of those days where the bugs came out in the light to be squished....

First, the crash when opening documents. It seems if the font substitution
requester doesn't need to come up, it dies

Fixed it so default font substutition font is always available (also it is
based on the user prefs set in prefs->type, though you can have your prefs
default to a non existant font, it will then force to the system default,
and if that is not available, the first darn font in the list)

Display of rotated text (not slant/twist, just rotated)

Amiga external graphics paths

Popups for print setup and character set default in prefs.

Not to mention that I have the drop have of drag and drop working. At least
for text. I've yet to find an application that will drop a graphic. Anyone
have any idea on an application that supports dropping?

Also, anyone know how to tell what formats the application is willing to
drop on another application? Probably will need to ask on a more programmer
oriented list

(They are listed in mime types, which leads me to another question)

Does anyone know where common mime types for the various Mac, Windows, and
Amiga formats are defined? Or are there any? Like Wordworth, Prowrite,
MacPaint, PICT files??? I'm finding some using google, but not sure I am
making the right choice. Also, does anyone know the difference for example
between

image/jpg

and

image/x-jpg

??

> > happening there! Should have a new release this week!
>
>Woohoo! It just keeps getting better and better!
>
>Tim Doty
>
>P.S. If you don't make a release this week I won't hold it against you

Deron Kazmaier - support@grasshopperllc.com
Grasshopper LLC Publishing -http://www.grasshopperllc.com
PageStream DTP for Amiga, Linux, Macintosh, and Windows

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On Wednesday 01 October 2003 22:51, PageStream Support wrote:
> Does anyone know where common mime types for the various Mac, Windows, and
> Amiga formats are defined? Or are there any? Like Wordworth, Prowrite,
> MacPaint, PICT files??? I'm finding some using google, but not sure I am
> making the right choice. Also, does anyone know the difference for example
> between
>
> image/jpg
>
> and
>
> image/x-jpg
>
> ??

I haven't seen any definitive listing of mime types and my experience is that
they differ between applications. IIRC the image/jpg vs image/x-jpg is that
the former is for standard types and the latter for extensions.

Tim Doty

On Wednesday 01 October 2003 22:51, PageStream Support wrote:
> Not to mention that I have the drop have of drag and drop working. At least
> for text. I've yet to find an application that will drop a graphic. Anyone
> have any idea on an application that supports dropping?

What about dropping of files? E.g., dragging a graphic file from konqueror to
the pgs document to add a graphic? Also, I seem to remember that drag&drop
differs between kde and gnome.

Tim Doty

> > Not to mention that I have the drop have of drag and drop working. At least
> > for text. I've yet to find an application that will drop a graphic. Anyone
> > have any idea on an application that supports dropping?
>
>What about dropping of files? E.g., dragging a graphic file from konqueror to
>the pgs document to add a graphic? Also, I seem to remember that drag&drop
>differs between kde and gnome.

I just get the file path in text I am wondering if I can ask for text
and graphics formats at the same time. Must get confused?) I guess I am
going to take out text support and see what happens...

I can't speak for the mechanics of kde, but gnome interfaces to the
underlying x windows drag & drop. As I recall, things should be interopperable

>Tim Doty

Deron Kazmaier - support@grasshopperllc.com
Grasshopper LLC Publishing -http://www.grasshopperllc.com
PageStream DTP for Amiga, Linux, Macintosh, and Windows

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]